Islanders forward Kyle Okposo is starting to put it all together

UNIONDALE, N.Y. —Regardless of the sport, when you’re selected with the seventh overall pick in the draft, expectations tend to be high. For New York Islanders forward Kyle Okposo, it was no different for him back in 2006.

“I think there were expectations from everybody, but none bigger than myself,” he said.

A highly-touted prospect at the time who was committed to the University of Minnesota, the St. Paul native spent a season and a half at the college level before joining the Islanders organization midway through the 2007-08 season. The transition to a successful NHL career, Okposo says, took longer than he would have liked.

“(The expectations) don’t really change in my mind,” he said. “I still want to be the best player I can be, and I think if you look at the numbers too much, it’s a tough thing and it can drive you crazy.”

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Arguably, Okposo’s numbers never seemed to have been enough to satisfy fans until this year. He posted modest point totals in each of his first five full NHL seasons, but has only truly blossomed from a statistical standpoint this year. Entering Tuesday’s tilt against the Nashville Predators, the 25-year-old was at roughly a point-per-game pace for the first time in his career, tallying five goals while adding 14 assists in his first 18 contests.

But do those numbers from those first five seasons tell the true tale of his performance?

“Yes and no,” he said. “I think I’ve played better in some spurts than the points I’ve put up, but saying that, I think I was missing some components to my game that I feel like this past summer I tried to add and implement. Now, I feel pretty good.”

Some of those components included a renewed improvement to his conditioning, as Okposo said he worked with a new trainer to get his body “functioning the way it needed to be,” as well as working with different skill coaches that were able to break down his game.

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While Okposo, who is a darkhorse candidate for the U.S. Olympic Team, is entering the prime of his career, Islanders defenseman Radek Martinek is hitting the twilight of his. Now 37, the Czech-born blueliner entered training camp without a contract, but after remaining with the team during the first few weeks of the season, was eventually brought back to the place where he’s spent 11 of his 12 NHL campaigns.

“I didn’t even think about it, how difficult it is (to jump back in), especially that first game back in Pittsburgh,” Martinek said. “It was pretty hard, especially against Pittsburgh. But when you play your second game, your third game, you get more comfortable.”

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You might not recognize the name “Rich Clune” right away, but you should recognize his face. Well, sort of.

Clune’s fight on Friday night in Winnipeg against Adam Pardy got him some airtime on all the big sports highlight shows, but not necessarily for the reasons he may have liked. A Pardy punch – the first one of the bout, Clune said – clipped him above the right eye, opening a big cut that sent blood flying all over his jersey. As he skated off the ice, he then played to the crowd, gesturing his arms wildly.

Afterwards, he tweeted from his @richcluneshow account on Twitter: “That was not real blood kids it was ketchup and I was just saying I love you to those Winnipeg fans. Hug your mother and do your homework ok.”

The “enforcer role” isn’t new to the 26-year-old, who is now in his second year in the Predators organization. Between stints in the AHL and NHL, he’s managed to rack up over 200 penalty minutes in each of the past three seasons.

Clune says his close friends know that he doesn’t talk much about hockey when he’s away from the rink, but he still got a few texts as well as plenty of tweets after the notable scrap.

“There’s people that are tweeting at me, and you get some haters out there,” said Clune, his face stitched up and eye bruised. “Honestly, they’re wasting their time if they’re going to tell me I suck.”

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The Princeton University men’s hockey team has gotten off to a rough start this season, posting a 1-5 record to start the season, including an abysmal 0-4 record in ECAC conference play.

The Tigers, who were slated to host UMass-Lowell on Tuesday night, were easily defeated by both Yale and Brown over the weekend, and head coach Bob Prier knows there is nowhere to go but up with his group.

“We can’t get much worse than the way it went down,” he said. “You look at the whole weekend, and we’re just a team right now that doesn’t have much margin of error, so we’re going to have to clean things up. We can’t have that many systematic errors again, because every one of them seems to bite us in the (rear end) somehow.”